Why Are There Notches Cut Along That Stone's Edge? An Alphabet Read Upward

The system uses a single guideline, which on a standing stone is the natural vertical edge of the stone itself, and forms letters as groups of one to five strokes placed in one of four ways relative to that line. Strokes to one side make one group of letters, strokes to the other side a second, strokes crossing the line at an angle a third, and short strokes crossing it squarely a fourth. Reading runs from the bottom of the edge upward, continuing across the top and down the other side on longer inscriptions. Counting the strokes and noting their position gives the letter directly.

The surviving corpus is narrow and repetitive:

• •Around four hundred stones survive, mostly in Ireland
• •Others occur in Wales, Scotland, the Isle of Man and Devon
• •Almost all carry personal names and nothing else
• •The usual formula is a name, then a word for son or descendant, then another name
• •Most date from roughly the fourth to the seventh centuries
• •Several Welsh examples carry the same text in Latin as well

The form of the script follows from what it was cut into and with, which is the usual answer to questions about early writing systems. Strokes across an edge can be made with a chisel or a knife without needing curves, which are difficult in stone and impossible in wood along the grain. Counting strokes removes the need to distinguish shapes, which suits a medium where precision is hard. Using the natural corner of a stone as the line means no line needs to be cut. And the design allows writing on a stick or a stave, which several later Irish texts describe and which would not survive, so what remains may be a small durable fraction of a wider practice.

Reading the script was never entirely lost, which is unusual and made the modern work far easier. Medieval Irish manuscripts, including a treatise known as the Scholars' Primer, set out the alphabet, the letter names and the stroke groups explicitly, so the key survived in writing even after the stones stopped being made. Those manuscripts also carry elaborations that are clearly later, including the tree names and various cipher variants used as puzzles. The bilingual stones in Wales, carrying the same names in Latin as well, provided independent confirmation of the letter values and settled several readings where the manuscript tradition was ambiguous.

The purpose of the stones is argued about and the leading readings are not exclusive. Grave markers is the traditional explanation and fits the personal names, though few have produced burials when excavated. Boundary and territorial markers is the current preference for many, since a stone stating a name and a lineage in a visible place makes a claim about who holds the land, and several stand at boundaries still recognised. The bilingual Welsh examples suggest a context where two communities had to read the same claim. Later Irish manuscripts treat the script as learned and mystical, assigning tree names to the letters, which is a medieval elaboration rather than evidence of original use.

Groups of one to five strokes placed above, below, across or through a line spell letters, and on a standing stone the line is the natural edge, read from the bottom upward. Around four hundred stones survive, almost all carrying a personal name and a lineage. The stroke design suits cutting with a knife or chisel into stone or wood, which suggests a wider practice on perishable material.